Right-wing populists secure seats in Romanian parliament
The nationalist party Alianța pentru Unirea Românilor (AUR) did surprisingly well in Sunday's election, entering the Romanian parliament after securing 8.69 percent in the Chamber of Deputies and 8.77 percent in the Senate. The party is against multiculturalism and is said to have links to the far-right scene. Commentators in Romania and Hungary examine the reasons for its success.
A tragic consequence of disappointment
Journalist Csaba Vass is appalled that the party has made it into parliament. He writes in Azonnali:
“I don't hate AUR because it doesn't like Hungarians, but because it doesn't love Romania either and will never be able to love it because it doesn't know this country at all. The AUR isn't led by Romanians, but by people who have never done anything other than observe Romanians. And the only thing they discovered was their fears. The AUR is nothing more than a symptom of the disappointment with Romanian politics over the past thirty years.”
A piece of home for those living abroad
Spotmedia elucidates why many Romanians living outside the country are attracted to AUR:
“This party has managed to keep alive the feeling among Romanians working abroad that they are making sacrifices for their country. ... It's this little nationalist narrative that they need in order to feel that they count. ... The party won many votes in the Botoșani district - a district with high levels of emigration, with whole villages where children are looked after by their relatives, with houses left half completed because there was not enough money to finish them and reunite the families. ... Here people survive on emotional stories. ... The AUR has found a breeding ground with its traditional and identitarian discourse.”
A refuge for the lost ones
G4media is not too worried by this development:
“This is a party without a life of its own, without structures in the regions, without mayors, without people in the local governments. It attracted a certain type of voters who, like moths flying into the light, are fascinated by extremes and radicals, by slogans promoting unification [with Moldova], by slogans against face masks, against Hungary, against globalisation, by patriotic slogans. When the lamp goes out as suddenly as it was turned on, these voters will go back to groping around in the darkness of their minds in search of a political vehicle to represent them. This audience will never disappear entirely, it has always had and always will have a potential of ten or twenty percent, at most.”